Brown River Queen cover art

Monday, August 8, 2011

London Burning

All my British friends are aghast at the violence sweeping parts of London tonight. From what I see on Twitter, mobs are setting shops and homes aflame after looting them. They're using Blackberry phones to coordinate their attacks, and I've also seen rumors that the rioters are targeting witnesses who tweet about it with Twitter's location feature.

The mob is composed of the ever-popular generic 'youth.' The rioters call themselves protesters, angry over a police shooting. Everyone else calls them looters, because anger over a police shooting is hard to equate with stripping the shelves of the nearest Best Buy before charging off to find a tennis shoe store.

The British police have thus far been over-run or reduced to standing around watching the flames. Which might beg the question 'Why don't cops have guns?' but since I'm not British I suppose that's really none of my business.

I do wish all my British fans and friends safety and peace. I hope you all emerge from this mess unscathed, unlooted, and un-arsoned.

These are difficult times. I fear that before it starts getting better it's going to get a lot worse, for all of us.